In the solemn and self-serious realm of post-metal, no band serves as a working template quite as much as Neurosis. For the last quarter century, the California group has blended massive atmospherics with steely-eyed ferocity, resulting in albums of grand arches and, at best, total immersion. Part of the delight, though, is tracing the band's stepwise development during their era; antithetical to the pervasive indie culture quip of "I liked their earlier stuff better," seldom few Neurosis fans would argue that the band arrived fully formed. Rather, their most foundational records appeared in their second decade as a unit (see, debatably, the Relapse era, from 1996 until 2001). And when I interviewed the band last year about their very good 10th album, Honor Found in Decay, Steve Von Till said that Neurosis was still working to develop and explore new techniques. "Rather than get set in our ways or find anything too comfortable, we find these new places to exist," he said, explaining that some of his favorite parts on the latest record stemmed not from the typical loud guitars but instead from keyboard player Noah Landis. For Von Till, Neurosis' emphasis on long-run evolution rather than short-term aberrations was a clear point of pride, a practical ideal to suit their musical aesthetic.
One clear heir to both Neurosis' sprawling post-metal cycles and their persistent development as an ensemble is Sweden's Cult of Luna. Like their transoceanic predecessors, Cult of Luna is as much a posse as a band, with seven members integrated into the fold over the last 14 years. And like Neurosis, they started simply as a viscous, belligerent metal band (see the great "Sleep", from their 2001 debut); with ambition and gusto, they have slowly augmented their sounds and approaches, not only incorporating electronics but also warping expectations of structure and form. That process, as one might imagine, hasn't been without its missteps. The Beyond, from 2003, had its moments, but the band's attempts to infuse electronics were sometimes coltish and awkward, like a nü metal band trying to transgress into a more sophisticated mold.
But their sixth album, this year's Vertikal, serves as proof positive that, even after more than a decade, Cult of Luna remains a promising and dynamic enterprise. Recorded in sessions that stretched for more than a year, Vertikal hinges upon Cult of Luna's ability to have the band's machine and men play nice. At its best, it finds a surprising middle ground between Deftones and Neurosis, and that seems to have been part of the point. As co-founder Johannes Persson told Britain’s ATTN: magazine, electronics served as a vital piece of the writing process for the first time on Vertikal, not a tacked-on and late textural addition. "On Eternal Kingdom," he said, referencing the band's 2008 album, "we tried to have the electronics in mind when we wrote, but we couldn't do that in the same sense. ...We put the layer electronics on top, but this time we had the electronics while we were writing. It made a huge impact."
Indeed, Vertikal's moments of synthesis unveil remarkably progressive doom, putting the surly form in uncomfortable positions and often finding a payload. "I: The Weapon" is an aggressive march, with a sharp and long riff that’s treated like an epic voyage. At one point near its midsection, Cult of Luna swaps the strings for a rubbery dubstep backbone. That might read terribly, but it’s as exhilarating as it is unexpected. In the coda, distorted guitars linger over and wrap around crackling keyboards. "The Sweep", the album's shortest non-instrumental track, is a brutal burst of industrial pop, with the warped pulses and sinews of noise waging war against the mutilated vocals. Cult of Luna's metal pedigree provides texture and depth; their interest in corroding their limits provides the inspiration. And on the beautiful, patient closer "Passing Through", the twinkles of glockenspiel and the sheets of digitally tweaked crooning float above sinister guitars set on an infinite loop. Previously, Cult of Luna's sideshow forays detracted from their bulkhead of heaviness; here, they serve as reinforcement.
Vertikal is an interesting and accomplished hybrid, but it isn't perfect. In fact, it works best on a track-by track basis, though the record clearly aims to be its own holistic, all-encompassing universe. Persson says Fritz Lang's early sci-fi horror Metropolis served as a stylistic inspiration for an album "that was going to sound like a 'factory.'" After a dozen trips through, though, the sequencing and transitions still feel ineffective. The prelude "The One" doesn't funnel into what would have been the more daring gambit, "I: The Weapon". And the end of "Mute Departure" and the beginning of "In Awe Of" have nothing to do with the interlude that divides them, a 45-second synthesizer piece that seems to summon the legacy of Laurie Spiegel only as a perfunctory demonstration of erudition.
Brevity isn’t a thing that Cult of Luna knows well, either. These 65 minutes are a median length for a band that’s consistently guilty of conflating quantity with quality. The distended build that opens the 19-minute "Vicarious Redemption" demands an edit that it doesn’t get; as is, some of the heaviest and best moments on the record, when the septet works in perfectly combustible unity, get diluted by the deep slog that surrounds them. But that's the risk of unrest, isn't it? Had Cult of Luna attempted to make the same record six times during the last decade, maybe they would have condensed it into a tight 30 minutes by now. That would be neither captivating nor interesting, though, and Vertikal is quite often both.
